2008-2013

'My' mecanopsis - a personal favourite plant and database entry!

It's with much pleasure after a number of late nights I can
declare the 2011 season 'Now Growing'
section open! This is becoming my annual equivalent of switching on
the Christmas lights (or as Andreas pointed out doing my taxes!)
once a year I input all the 'out' dates for plants in the database
that are no longer in the beds and then after a bit of behind the
CMS secret curtain magic Dorian does something I imagine like
cutting a ribbon or hitting a huge red switch and hey presto we
have a new set of 'clean' beds and only the perrenial plants appear
for a few short weeks before we start sowing and planting them all
again!

Filling out the plant database can (frankly) at times be a real
bore BUT with two years worth of data now logged in I can really
start
to see the value of this as a permanent record of what the
Friends of Abbey Gardens group have achieved as well as an
informative resource for other community gardening groups. As more
and more plants go in you can compare varieties, add recipes and
generally start to feel the benefit of all Hamish, Chris and I's
diligent recording and photo-taking.

I know it's a tiny bit sad but I also really like to have a
record of the plants I personally have lovingly grown. The blue poppies are a real favourite - the seeds came from
plants in Karen's garden (which she in turn no doubt grew from
seed!) and I then grew the first plants we had at the garden.
Today (three years on) I gave my Gran some new plants grown from
the next generation of gathered seeds, the rest will be for sale at
this weekends Spring Event.